Real-World Rides
Not all drifters roll in rides as exotic as Nobuteru's S15 or Ueno's Soarer. Team Slip Stream's cars are daily drivers, and they are proof that you don't need big coin to go drifting. While we were with Team Slip Stream, Wes used his magic camera to shoot a few of Slip Stream's cars. How do we know it's a magic camera? Because Wesley's snaps always come out better than ours. How else would you explain it? Oh yeah, we suck.
Once Sugita creates enough of a gap with his own private traffic break, he launches the car and winds it up to what looks like way too much speed for the corner. He seamlessly unweights the back end and hangs it only a few feet from the edge. He repeats this process more times than I like and I find myself wishing he'd worn his British Knights, or Chuck T's, or whatever it is that's en vogue for today's outlaw drifter on the go. Anything but those damn flip-flops.
Assemble YOUR Crew
After sliding up and down the mountain for some time, we sat down with the men and women of Team Slip Stream. Yes, there are women in the club, in addition to a husband and wife who both drift with Slip Stream. Some members even bring their kids to the touge--family fun for everyone!
The crew was founded in 1988. Sugita was the second member, eventually taking it over from the founder. At first Slip Stream was a motorcycle gang, which is where the name came from. Later, everyone switched to cars and tried to emulate the tone of the motorcycle straight pipes. The only requirement for membership is that you come out to the touge every weekend. If you don't come to the touge, you get kicked out of the club--simple.
Sugita tells me he's been drifting for 13 years. He started out with a Toyota Levin, and he cultivated his skills with patience and a lot of practice. He also has some advice for would-be drifters. "At first you should find a wide-open area. Just practice in circles, and try to remember the feeling. When you first drift on the touge, don't try every curve, just try every other one."
Sugita also says he couldn't care less about the D1, but one of the girls has visions of D1 greatness in her head because she wants to prove herself as a better driver than the guys. However, she is quick to point out that there is no oncoming traffic in D1. "If it is another drifter coming at me, then it does not affect me, but if a regular car comes, then I get scared because I cannot tell how they will react."
Another female Slip Stream member is 26-year-old Makui. She's been drifting for seven years, and her current ride is a 180SX. She also harbors dreams of becoming a D1 driver. Makui tells us the hardest part of drifting is doing her own maintenance. Makui must be getting good at the maintenance thing, considering she rolled her Hachi Roku five years ago and it probably took more than zip ties and JB Weld to fix that one.
Ichimi says he likes to go to the touge in order to release some tension after a bad day. He says that in order to do well at the touge, you have to get rid of the shock of getting sideways with oncoming traffic, but he also acknowledges the fear factor. "When a car comes from the other way I get scared, and sometimes when I try too hard to impress the gallery I scare myself," says Ichimi. "But the scariest thing ever is our team leader, Sugita!"
Twenty-three-year-old Tomohiro was one of our favorites on this night. His beat-down FC3S looked like something Xzibit would push into West Coast Customs. For the most part, Hiro's RX-7 is red with six different shades of primer spotted all over the body. The 13B has seen better days, but this bombastic beater made more passes than anyone else on this night.
Hiro has all of the molding equipment and tools to make his own parts. The thing that scares him most about an accident is figuring out where to get the money to fix the damage and replace the parts. Hiro has no aspirations for D1 greatness. "I would rather stick to the touge," he said. "I don't think D1 is any different than the touge. To me it's the same. In D1 you have to go at a certain time. People decide when you drive, but at the touge you can decide for yourself. At touge you can go drift whenever you want."
As much as we respected Sugita's power and Hiro's tenacity, they were no match for Inako. Our hormones were powerless against her charms. When she stepped out of her midnight-blue S14, she looked more like an F1 star's trophy girlfriend. Like the touge, Inako is curvy in all the right places, and her tight white jeans stayed impossibly clean at our grungy pit-stop rest area. The 29-year-old hottie works in real estate, and aside from her car, nothing about her says, "touge drifter."
But our doubts are shut down as soon as Inako starts ripping up and down the touge. Not only does she have the hottitude, but she's also got mad skills to back it up. She's been drifting for five years, and for three years before that she rode crotch rockets at the touge. She's been in Slip Stream for two years and seems to have worked hard to earn her slot. "I'm friends with Sugita," Inako tells us. "I wanted to be on the team for some time, and he only asked me to join Slip Stream two years ago."
As much as she wanted to run with Slip Stream, Inako is a little more casual about her life as a touge drifter. She doesn't see any differences between male and female drifters, and touge drifting is more of a hobby for her. Inako's favorite part about it is the sheer convenience because the touge is only about 15 minutes away from her house. She doesn't even want to move into the professional ranks. "I think the D1 gets too serious."
Inako does have some words of encouragement for all of the would-be female drifters. "Being a girl, it is hard to get into drifting," she says. "Don't worry about your heart; just get in there and don't be scared. Just keep going and work on improving. Don't stop drifting. Even if you mess up, don't worry; you'll get it."
Just don't mess up too much at the touge because otherwise you'll, um, die. You know, those parking lot drift events are looking that much better. It seems to me that cones cause less carnage than cliffs.